Chapters

Etruscan Breadwinners

In 1898,
15 years after the List of Hands on Works was compiled, Harry Barnard produced
a fascinating photographic record of Wedgwood workers known as 'Etruscan Bread
Winners 1898'. This 27 page album contains a series of extremely high quality
photographs of each of the different departments taken by Barnard during July
and August of that year. Furthermore, he also had the foresight to record the
names of the individuals underneath each picture. The photographs reveal that
most men wore caps, that manual workers typically had collarless shirts and
waistcoats, not to mention the shirts and ties of the decorators, gilders and
throwers and turners, and the suits of the warehousemen and office staff. The photographs
emphasise the social hierarchy among employees.

In all
probability a wash and brush-up and a change of clothes took place prior to
being photographed. The majority of females all appear in their 'Sunday best',
as evidenced on the photographs of printers and transferers, paintresses, warehouses
and slip decorators. The tile makers - although suitably dressed in working
clothes - appeared spotlessly clean, which also applied to the workers shown in
the glost oven. The Jasper black basalt throwers and turners again appeared
wearing clean aprons, but evidence of clay on the shoes and lower
part of the trousers of the younger employees in the front row suggest a quick
wash and brush-up. The one exception is the sliphouse and mill workers who
appeared as if having taken a break during their shift, including the young
Kennard Wedgwood in the front row. Likewise Francis Wedgwood also appeared on
the photograph of the 'Oddest Men'.

What
percentage of employees this 347 actually represents is impossible to determine
with precise accuracy. Wage books do not exist for the turn of the 19th
century, and no complete list survives from this period. The nearest
contemporary account is the list of 723 names compiled by Cecil Wedgwood in
1883. If this figure was still accurate fifteen years later it is a mystery as
to why as little as only half of the workforce was recorded.

Although
the photographs obviously under-represent the total number of employees they
still reveal something of the age and sex structure of the workshops. The
sliphouse and mill, biscuit oven and warehouse, earthenware glost ovens and
earthenware potters were all exclusively male. This obviously also applied to
the oddmen and oddest men which included bricklayers, joiners and engineers, as
also were the gilders. This was unusual as generally both men and women tended
to be employed as gilders, while burnishing, which appears to have been omitted
altogether, was generally a female occupation.

Predominately
male workshops included the Jasper departments, such as throwers, turners,
decorators and those at the Jasper oven, as well as the general warehouse and
office staff. The thrower usually required two assistants, either females or
boys, one to turn his wheel and the other to 'take off'. These departments
usually included two or three females, as well as boys (as assistants) and male
teenagers (as apprentices). A higher proportion of females existed among the
china potters, the majolica department and tile makers, the latter where half
the workforce appeared to be female, the majority being in their late teens or
early to mid-twenties. Again it appears that young boys were also employed in
these departments. Females far outnumbered males as printers and transferrers.
Men would have printed the design onto tissue paper, with the younger girls
working as paper cutters, cutting out the patterns for the women who
transferred them onto the ware. The only departments to be exclusively female
were the slip-decorators, paintresses and apprentice paintresses.

This
section is drawn from 'The History of Etruria', by Kevin Salt, 2006 (available
for purchase from the Wedgwood
Museum).